I know that may have been a little tough to read but I was practicing typing with my left hand only. I don’t type well in any case (I type biblically… my left hand doesn’t know what my right is doing!) but for the next while I’ll be typing, brushing my teeth, eating (and slopping my raisin bran everywhere!) using only my left hand. The other, smarter hand is gonna be taking a sabbatical…doing that sling-thing for a few weeks…

Remember that time when it was really snowy and icy out and you thought, “Wow! What a beautiful day to go jogging in this winter wonderland!!” And then you had a subsequent thought, “No, wait. That would not be a wise choice! There might be… in fact, there WOULD be…an elevated risk of falling out there! It would be truly STUPID to go jogging in these treacherous meteorological conditions!! One slip and…BAM! You would’ve really messed yourself up! How could anyone have such poor judgement?!” ?

Apparently, not everyone is as smart as you.

Sooooo….

Somebody I know is having to have surgery next week on an apparently “huuuuuuuge” rotator cuff tear. It happened in the snow and ice storm back in February…So, it was in the winter, but he got it in the “fall”!

(Do you remember that ice storm? Do you remember that there might have been a moment around 10:15 when you felt the earth shake a little, just for less than one second?)

Anyhooo…looking at a month with my good hand in a sling, I feel a little like Yogi Berra when he said, “I’d give my right arm to be ambidexterous!”

And I’ve been taking an inventory of all the activities I won’t be doing for a while, while my dominant hand is on vacation…

No shifting gears in my truck.

No placing “your right hand over your heart for the playing of our National Anthem”.

No pulling my wallet out of that back pocket (it’s gonna look like yoga every time I have to get out my library card!).

Let’s see…

Oh, man! I just thought of this! How sad!

No clapping!

I LOVE clappping in church!!

It’s easy!

It’s fun!

It makes me feel like I’m really “giving up the praise”! Like I’m saying before the Lord, “Let it go! Let it go! Can’t hold it back anymore!”!

And to sing, praise, and clap your hands is biblical! God wants you to!

Y’know, a few folks have asked me if there’s anything they could do while I’ll be “slung” and I couldn’t really think of anything. This summer, Tina and I kinda had a joke when it got close to 10:00 and the Braves would be behind again in the seventh or eighth inning…

She’s say, “Well, I better go brush my teeth…”

And I’d say, “Could you brush mine while yer in thar?”

I’ve been practicing left-handed brushing and I’m not very good at. I’m getting one of those battery toothbrushes that go in circles so she doesn’t actually have to brush hers and mine, too!

But, I did think of one thing you could do for me that I can’t for myself…

You could clap while we sing!

If you don’t clap, do!

If you do, clap louder!

“Cause I would if I could, but I can’t!

You know, when you clap and sing His praises with us…even when you don’t feel like it… it is soooo good for you! Even if you don’t feel like it, your will is telling your mind that there are a million reasons why you should!

And your heart gets the message!

And there may be someone beside…maybe right behind you…with a heavy or discouraged heart. Maybe they don’t feeling like singing to Him…

But they hear you sing! And they see you clap! And your singing tells their will to tell their mind that there are a million reasons to do it!